CORAL GABLES, Fla. (AP) — At a recent Miami men’s basketball game, Niu Rong’s pink sequined dress sparkled in the lights.
The popular halftime performer known as “The Red Panda” finished her signature seven-minute performance, looked up at a crowd of fans chanting her name, and smiled before dismounting.
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The camera instantly rose. Members of the Hurricanes chanted “I love you, red panda!” A security guard shook his head in disbelief, and a nearby fan loudly asked, “How did she do that?” Members of the Hurricanes dance team lined up to take photos with her before she left.
Over the decades, Niu has become accustomed to performing to great fanfare at NBA, WNBA and college basketball games — her first halftime performance was a 1993 Los Angeles Clippers game. Still, she couldn’t put into words how much the support meant to her as sports fans rallied around her after falling during a WNBA game last July.
“I feel so much support,” Niu said Wednesday during Miami’s home game against Stanford. “It’s unsupportable – I don’t know. I don’t have a better word to describe that feeling. It’s unappreciable.”
Niu comes from a family of acrobats. She has been doing this since she was 7 years old, when her father first discovered her talent by helping her balance bowls and bricks on her head at home in Shanxi Province, China.
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Her performance involves riding a custom-made unicycle that extends about 8 feet above the court and balancing custom-made bowls on her shins before flipping them over her head.
During halftime of the WNBA Commissioner’s Cup final between the Indiana Fever and Minnesota Lynx, Cow fell off his unicycle and fell to the court a minute into the game. She lay there for several minutes and was eventually helped up in a wheelchair, and was later diagnosed with a fractured left wrist.
“I realize now that I was disoriented. It wasn’t just the pain here,” Niu said Wednesday, pointing to her left wrist, which she remembers being swollen and painful. “I couldn’t quite tell because of the impact. They said, ‘Can you walk?’ and I said, ‘Yeah,’ and I tried to get up and walk. And then, I think I passed out.”
She spent 11 hours in a Minneapolis hospital with two Lynx staff by her side. As she lay in her hospital bed, she wondered what had gone wrong with the move she’d performed so many times.
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“I’m not saying I’m that good or anything,” she said. “I generally don’t fall. Bowls do fall because they fly up in the air and sometimes I can’t control (them). But riding a unicycle … it shouldn’t get out of hand.”
Cow returns to competition after being discharged from hospital. Her unicycle was still in the same spot where she had left it in her dressing room.
She started inspecting it, checking the rotation of the wheels, looking at the handles. Then she noticed one of the pedals was slightly bent. She usually packages her equipment very carefully when traveling, but it somehow got damaged in transit; whether it was at security or on the plane, she’s not sure.
“Normally I set up the unicycle. I test it. I test it like this,” she said, turning the wheel while demonstrating the process of checking the equipment. “I tested. But I didn’t test (the pedal).”
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Niu is still shaken by the memory of the fall, which required surgery and about four months of recovery, but she has received an outpouring of support on social media, including from The Fever star Kaitlyn Clark, as well as cards and gifts.
She returns to the court on October 23 for an Amazon Prime event, then returns to the NBA court on November 1 for a game between Chicago and Philadelphia.
Returning to court is not easy.
“I still have the idea,” she said. “I still have that thought when I start pedaling.”
But as fans chanted her name and gave up halftime to go to the concession stand and restrooms to watch her perform, Niu was filled with gratitude and motivation.
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“I wanted to prove that I could do this,” she said. “But (when) I couldn’t, they still chanted for me. I felt like I owed them something. I felt so grateful. I don’t have the best words to describe that feeling, but it was a lot of support. It’s in my heart.”
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AP Sports: https://apnews.com/sports
